Dr Beth Singler is the Junior Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. Prior to this she was the post-doctoral Research Associate on the “Human Identity in an age of Nearly-Human Machines” project at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. She has been an associate fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence since 2016.

Beth explores the social, ethical, philosophical and religious implications of advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. As a part of her public engagement work she has produced a series of short documentaries. The first, Pain in the Machine, won the 2017 AHRC Best Research Film of the Year Award.

Beth has appeared on Radio4’s Today, Sunday and Start the Week programmes discussing AI, robots, and pain. In 2017 she spoke at the Hay Festival as one of the ‘Hay 30’, the 30 best speakers to watch. She was also one of the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 – the list of the most influential people in various fields in both 2017 and 2018.

She has also spoken on AI and human identity at the London Science Museum, Cheltenham Science Festival, the Barbican, the Being Human Festival, and the Cambridge Festival of Ideas. She has appeared at the Edinburgh Science Festival, Ars Electronica, IP Expo, and New Scientist Live. In 2019 she spoke at the Norwich Science Festival, the London Science Museum, and was interviewed by the New Scientist, Forbes, and the BBC, among others.

by @smolrobots

Beth is an experienced social and digital anthropologist, and her first academic book is a groundbreaking in-depth ethnography of the ‘Indigo Children’ – a New Age re-conception of both children and adults which uses the language of science, evolution, and spirituality.